June 10, 2020

Iran supplies almost two million tonnes livestock feed in 70 days

Over 1.8 million tonnes of raw materials for livestock feed has been supplied to Iran's animal feed producers in 70 days since the start of their current calendar year (March 20), said managing director of Iran's Livestock Affairs Support Company Hassan Abbasi Maroufan, IRNA reported.

"Of course, the country's demand during this period was 2.2 million tonnes, which wasn't met due to the slowness of the transportation system following the coronavirus outbreak," the official said.

Until a month ago, up to 15,000 tonnes of livestock feed were cleared from the customs every day and transported to the provinces, but now the daily amount of transportation has reached over 40,000 tonnes, which will soon fill the demand gap, Maroufan explained.

There are currently 2.2 million tonnes of livestock feed stored in the country's ports and are going through the process of health and standard controls for clearance and they will be on the market soon.

Earlier this year, the outbreak of coronavirus and the closure of trade borders with the neighbours in addition to the economic impacts of the US sanctions resulted in a drastic fall in the country's animal feed imports to a point that the prices of such commodities skyrocketed in the country.

"It was announced that due to sanctions money transfers for about three million tonnes of corn and soybean meal were not carried out on time and so the supply of those goods were affected. As a result, the price of animal feed went up," Majid Movafeq Ghadirli, the chairman of Iran Feed Industry Association, said in early May.

In this regard, Maroufan also noted that Central Bank of Iran (CBI) did not allocate subsidised foreign currency for the first four months of 2020, and that resulted in the price hikes.

However, CBI has resumed the subsidisation of livestock and poultry feed imports since early April, according to the official.

Iran imports over 80% of raw materials for feed production, according to the Iran Feed Industry Association.